Center Stage: Bowser’s Rage Stage (Super Mario Bros. Wonder)

In “Center Stage,” Wolfman Jew discusses environments and level design across the games industry. They may be single levels, larger sandboxes, or broader settings. They may be as small as a room and as large as a world. Some may not even be good. But they are all interesting.

Contains spoilers for the final level and boss fight of Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s main story. Thanks to Cart Boy for edits.

Every Mario game chooses its title carefully. Super Mario Sunshine brought Nintendo into the sun and surf of Isle Delfino and the bright horizons of gaming’s Sixth Generation. Super Mario 3D Land highlighted the stereoscopic graphics of the Nintendo 3DS, but it also hinted at how it would reimagine 2D Mario in a 3D space. The first word seems odd after having gone through four of them, but the “New” in New Super Mario Bros. is telling; it’s Super Mario Bros… but new. Super Mario Bros. Wonder keeps that going with that final word. “Wonder” is everything to Mario’s best sidescroller in decades. It’s a call to weirdness and surprise and the hope that every world, every level, every enemy will stick with you.

Image: Source Gaming. Time slows down in the Valley Fulla Snootles, causing a dramatic gameplay shift and allowing players to see the game’s excellent character animation. It’s just one Wonder Effect that makes the game so dynamic.

There are many, many ways Mario Wonder goes about this, but the most important one is the Wonder Flower, this catch-all magical spell that lets a normal level violently twist itself into knots. In theory, and often in practice, it allows any course to feel unique and memorable. Functionally, each one is just a button that lets you turn on or off gimmicks that might otherwise be baked into the level anyway, but there’s great fun in them. For one thing, their unfettered energy is less out of the blue than an evolution of a theme in the level proper, so you should be able to acclimate to them easily. For another, you choose to accept the hallucinatory effect. There’s a niceness to this. You do have to go through some of the Wonder Flowers eventually, because the seeds they give are necessary for unlocking the later levels or bosses, but only some and almost entirely at your discretion. There are few “required” Wonder Seeds, and few that aren’t an evolution of ideas you’re already exploring. It’s accessible, kind, and generous with the agency it gives you.

And then Bowser just throws all that accessible kindness out in one wild, spectacular finale.

Image: Source Gaming. Bowser at about the height of his delightful excess, and the site of the story’s climax.

The Final Battle! Bowser’s Rage Stage is a very standard final boss level for a Mario platformer. You go through a tough gauntlet featuring a collection of trials and mechanics from all the other worlds, it ends with a fight against Bowser, and like most Mario bosses he’s an extension of the level. This is a good formula for the series; what matters to Nintendo’s mascot is a sense of ceaseless movement and energy. His archenemy shouldn’t be a threat to that, but one more avenue for it. Furthermore, the villain and his stronghold smartly hide behind their threatening look merely one more jump in challenge at the end of a game filled with them. And Bowser plays that role well here as a beautifully ugly fusion of Koopa and castle, leading to a boss fight and level that are both very strong. Instead of upending the process, the course’s effect—one you do have to engage with—shades it.

Image: Source Gaming. This is mostly here to show off the animation, but this attack by Bowser’s is a classic danger in a end game level like this.

See, the premise is that Bowser Jr. starts things off by throwing out a cavalcade of Wonder Effects, all of which blast out at you (and blast him away) in a daring rush. Many of these are among the game’s best, at least among the ones which don’t shapeshift Mario into something. The giant, twisting flying dragon demands you stay on its back, only after being resurrected from skeletal remains that can squish you right from the start. The Bullrush charge from the first world is the only way to pass a giant wall. The game’s perspective physically tilts so as to drop a spike ball on you. The singing Piranha Plants give a charming break between action bits. An anti-gravity section is fun and surprising. You make a daring climb up a series of onset candy cane ladders. And there’s a bit of synergy with the last effect in the stage by having the Inchworm Pipes, the first effect you ever dealt with, be the device that brings you to the Bowser fight proper.

Image: Source Gaming. Bowser’s Rage Stage also makes time for a few of Mario Wonder‘s many stylistic changes, like obscuring the characters in silhouette or warping the background.

In its own way, that fight also largely plays with new and old ideas. The deeply absurd Castle Bowser primarily fights you with giant cloud hands—references to the giant cloudy Piranha Plants that guarded him for the entire game—on a stage playing an endless beat. The only way to destroy them or hurt his unprotected underside is to follow that beat. The platform gives Mario a giant boost if he jumps at the right time; it’s a very visceral attack for the 2D games, which are less combative than other Mario series. The terrain that does this is first introduced at the end of the level; it’s the only way to get to the fight. That kind of teachable moment is more traditional Mario level fare. And the fight takes it to a demented level, where each phase breaks the terrain up more and more to have alternating bouncing platforms that never, ever stop playing.

Image: Source Gaming. Castle Bowser follows the Mario standard in being as much an obstacle as an enemy. And like the Mario standard, this leads to gameplay that can be both balletic and comical.

The platforms have another value in that by following a diegetic beat, they’re helping the final battle be something of an in-game metal concert. This is a noted interest Mario Wonder has; it’s filled with impromptu musical numbers you access through the Wonder Effects. A few of them even have the same mechanic, where you have to jump to a beat to get more height or activate something. Bowser’s Rage Stage refers to the diegetic songs through the moment with King Boo and the Piranha Plant choir, but the entire level works like this. The song is perfectly synched with the autoscroll for the first half, creating this cinematic quality that’s somewhat surprising for Mario. It’s a satisfying note from a game with a deep interest in playing with audio.

Image: Source Gaming. The boosted jump effect is introduced right before the final battle. Normally it’d debut right at the start and add in complexity, but here the gameplay medley comes first.

But there’s one other thing that makes the whole level special, beyond the frenetic energy and the excellent level design and music. Because Super Mario Bros. Wonder is so aggressively nonlinear, it is entirely possible that you can get to Bowser’s Rage Stage without ever having seen some of these effects. When I first played it, King Boo’s appearance shocked me; I knew he was in the game but hadn’t seen his assaultive aria in Light-Switch Mansion. Any player could have avoided many of the other courses it’s homaging, or gone through them without triggering their effects, since you can avoid many levels or opting into the Wonder Effects of the ones you choose. Even the mechanic of jumping to the beat could be found in an earlier and easily missable course. Nintendo EPD had the confidence to end the main story with a tribute its players might very well not have recognized. It’s a degree of confidence emblematic of the Nintendo Switch era, one you can see everywhere in Wonder (of note is the game’s final secret level in the postgame, whose very last challenge is so mean, impossible, and audacious that it becomes hilarious).

Image: Source Gaming. The zero gravity section, a possible Super Mario Galaxy homage that also twists the series’ underwater movement, is a fun and surprising come down after the danger. It’s also a mechanic that only shows up once before, and under very different circumstances.

All these things make Bowser’s Rage Stage feel as vital and fun as the game it’s concluding, and its final sequence ends it on such a great note. It’s the actual credits, which fashions itself as an interactive menu à la Super Smash Bros. You try to touch each name while navigating constant Wonders, creatures, and alterations to the screen. There’s no reward for hitting every name beyond the game remembering your highest score. The mini-level is reward enough, a delightful gameplay medley scored to a musical one. It’s just there, and it’s fun, because Mario Wonder is fun. Like the rest of the game, it feels like nothing so much as a moment that exists out of a creative need, not just the expectation for a bit in another Mario sidescroller. For a man with three hundred games under his belt Mario’s got a decent track record on that front, if far from a perfect one, and it’s always great to see.

Image: Source Gaming. The—pun actually not intended—wonderful credits to Super Mario Bros. Wonder bursts with charm. It’s also a collection of different mechanics, but it manages to feel entirely of its own even after following a previous collection of mechanics.

For all of its grandeur, Bowser’s Rage Stage is not Mario Wonder’s craziest level. The hidden courses of Special World and their aforementioned ultra-secret final level are even wilder. They provide a notable uptick in challenge, with layouts that boggle the mind. It’s arguably also not the most musical level in the game thanks to a couple that put one single song front and center. This is deliberate, and it is right, because the course doesn’t need to take anything as far as it can go—just take enough things to a far enough place. That’s what a good ending to the story needs to be: one more medley to close things out for the players who’ll stop after hitting the credits. Except that even then it manages to find new ideas and twists.

Image: Source Gaming. Surprise, ingenuity, and charm are constants throughout the game, and even the dark atmosphere keeps that going.

I suppose that makes this normal, bizarre final level Super Mario Bros. Wonder in microcosm. It never stops iterating or inventing, all the while filled with passion and charm and a powerful musical temperament. There’s even some of the series’ patented goofball humor in there, from the bizarre (and charmingly uncomfortable) Talking Flowers to the silly action movie climax. For how wild and unpredictable it is when you first experience it, it’s just following a great map. And that’s all it needs to do.